


Legacy

by starcunning (Vannevar)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, FDNH Apocrypha, Family, First Do No Harm, Multi, OT3, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-28 14:52:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8450680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vannevar/pseuds/starcunning
Summary: She and Jack are both awake, so she puts on water for coffee, and thinks about what it must be like, to have a chance to say goodbye. She thinks about waking up in the middle of the night.They sit at his table in their rumpled shirts, and say nothing, until they do.





	

The bed is vast around her, and the hand on her shoulder is gentle, shaking her until she wakes. The recessed lights overhead are off; they look like eyes in the dark. She rolls over, almost falls; the house mother catches her—all long, gangly limbs—and sets her back on the mattress edge.  
“Angela,” she says, very gravely, “Angela, come with me.”  
Her roommate still sleeps in the bottom bunk; she remains so as the door opens, a column of light falling across her face, and closes again.

She is too young for dread, so she holds tighter to her house mother’s trembling hand, rubbing sleep from her eyes. It’s late—she knows that—and all these lights on feels wrong, and they go down to the director’s office, which is the same clean white and pale wood as the dormitories.

“Something very terrible has happened,” he tells her—first in English, then again in German. “Your parents,” he says. “We’ve just got word that your parents have died.”  
“No,” she says, because that doesn’t make sense. Her parents are doctors; they save lives. That’s why she’s here, isn’t it? So they can go save lives?  
“I’m sorry, Angel,” says her house mother, “but it’s true.”

She goes to the funeral, small and grave and silent, and when the people come to speak, she says nothing, because she doesn’t know how to let it out of her, the memory of her parents. She remembers their emails, their video-calls, their gentle chiding about keeping on top of her English. She remembers the rare, stolen holiday, always to somewhere far off. Always to somewhere with sunshine and waves, her mother reading books on the beachside and growing brown. They wanted to save lives. They wanted to save lives. She wants to save lives. It is a war; she knows that. She wants there to never be another war again. She wants none of her classmates, none of the day girls, to put on a black dress and be serious and to have nothing to say.

She is eight years old, and she will be a doctor someday.

— — — — —

She is twenty-seven, back in Geneva, not so far from where she went to school. She misses Zürich, but here she flies. She saves lives. She wakes to the sound of ringing. Under it, an air traffic controller drones on in English. Under that, the sharp gasp of startled breath.  
She reaches for Gabriel’s wrist, to anchor him, but he’s already turned to answer the line.  
“Reyes,” he says.  
Jack groans, groggily. He bats at Gabriel’s arm, shifting as though to settle back in for sleep.  
In the middle of the bed, Gabriel sits up. He is speaking, now, low and rapid, and her Spanish was never that good when she was awake and he was patient. Jack moves to nuzzle the place Gabriel’s shoulder should be. His blue eyes open when the warmth he expects is absent.  
Angela holds his gaze. She is no longer too young for dread. Gabe waves a hand, and she slips out from under the covers so that he can follow. He plucks his discarded clothing from the floor, shrugging back into it.  
“I’m going to LA,” he says.  
“Now?” Jack asks.  
“Yes, now,” he says. “As in, I’m about to walk my ass down to the tarmac and get on a civilian plane.”  
“What’s going on?” Angela says. She is still standing beside the bed. Jack sits up, shaking his head clear.  
“Gotta go say goodbye to my _abuela,_ ” he says, turning his face away from them both under the pretense of stretching his neck.  
Angela sighs, a soft little “oh” that drowns beneath Jack’s quiet curse. “‘Course,” Jack says. “Do you want a ride down?”  
“Get Athena to pilot,” he says. “I wanna call her. It’s a long flight. Too bad the jet’s not ready for testing, huh?”  
Angela tries to smile at that feeble joke. “Call her,” she says, softly. Like he needs her approval. Her permission.  
He nods, though, like he’s grateful, and bends over the bed to kiss Jack goodbye.  
“Love you,” Jack says. “I’ll sort out all the logistics, don’t worry about it. Call me, when you get a chance, let me know you got there safe.”  
“Yeah,” Gabriel says. “Love you too. You watch him, girl,” he continues, looking at Angela now. He tries to smile. She can see how brittle it is. She wants to pull him back into bed and hold his head against her shoulder, but he needs to be elsewhere.  
“Be safe, Gabriel,” she says instead, and hugs him—too tight, and not for long enough.  
“Don’t worry about me, Angela,” he says, and then he goes; is gone.

She and Jack are both awake, so she puts on water for coffee, and thinks about what it must be like, to have a chance to say goodbye. She thinks about waking up in the middle of the night.  
They sit at his table in their rumpled shirts, and say nothing, until they do.  
“I was thinking about taking some leave time,” Jack says.  
“Should we be planning a holiday right now?” she wonders. “You should be with him, and I don’t think he wants to go to Hawaii like last time.”  
“Not a vacation,” he says. “A trip. I’m not as young as I once was.”  
“Stop that. You’re perfectly healthy.”  
“I know. But you should meet my parents.”  
“You shouldn’t leave him, not if you don’t have to. Not for a while.”  
“I want him to come,” Jack says. “When he gets back … when he’s ready, I’ll ask.”  
“Will your parents understand?”  
“I think so. I hope so. I’m not willing to gamble them not meeting the most important people in my life on the chance they won’t get it. Say you’ll come.”  
“I’ll go,” she says. Then she pauses a long while, stirring her coffee. “You could come with me to see my parents this weekend, if you wanted. Bring flowers.”  
“Angie, that’s terrible.” But he’s laughing.  
“I know,” she admits, “but twenty years as an orphan means I get to make a few jokes.”  
He reaches for her hand. “I’ll go,” he says.

— — — — —

Angela is bone-deep tired with sore muscles and sunlight. The back of her throat tastes sour, and of American beer. Her comm beeps, flashing blue onto her ceiling, where the recessed lights hang like eyes. The sound is loud and deep and insistent. In the half-second reprieve she can hear the Street Parade continuing at street level. A misnomer. The parade is over; only the partying still carries on.  
She sweeps the covers with one hand, the other groping for her comm. But Jack isn’t in bed with her. He’s calling her, probably, at whatever small hour this is. She is too secure for dread.

Until she reads the screen. Something very terrible has happened.

She swore, all those years ago, that she would save lives. Her parents had saved so many; she knows she has, too. With her hands. With her work. She is powerless and small and as awkward as if she were still all gangly limbs. She doesn’t trust herself to change, to do anything other than run. There’s no time. Gabriel is dying; she is a doctor; she became a doctor to save lives. Like her parents saved lives. She is alone, pushing through the crowd, and the sound of the revels falls away, but that’s impossible, she’s headed into town. Into the thick of it.  
In the hush she hears the holocaster, in English first, then in German.  
“We’ve just gotten word that Jack Morrison, Commander of Overwatch, is confirmed to have died.”  
“No,” she says, because that doesn’t make sense.

She wears black and says little, because she knows too much and is afraid that she will let it out of her. She crosses the country and does it again, like an echo. Like a mythical Greek punishment.

She is thirty-one, in Washington, DC, and she is afraid that someday all she’ll remember is holidays and brunches and a legacy that dwarfs her.


End file.
